The saga begins - Q&A with Lucasfilm VP of Marketing Jim Ward

Q: I have a question about the starwars.com website and the weblink aspects of the DVD. There are concerns about materials being on the website as opposed to being on the disc. Often they don't have a long life, they don't last, because when the movie goes away after awhile the content goes away on the website. Is the idea of this DVD-specific website link something that you see continuing to support and grow in the future?

Jim Ward: That's a fair question. We have a thriving ongoing regular site, starwars.com. We wanted to give those people that made investment in our DVD something that was special to them, and we certainly want to do that. Over the course of time how will that manifest itself? I honestly can't tell you. It's a very fair question though. I would hope that we could be able to maintain that and keep it fresh as best we could, but I can't really make any promises now because it's actually new frontier for us and so we're just going to have to explore it as we move on.

Q: Do you see it as a place where you can include what you couldn't on the DVD? Do you see that as a place where some of those things can go?.

JW: Absolutely. That's the great part about it, we can put a lot of content up there, we can do a lot of things with the DVD itself. We could have special live chats, where as you watched the DVD on your monitor you can be involved in chat and other content that we couldn't include on the disc. Absolutely.

Q: There was a discussion I had with another reporter, if the teaser for Episode II will be on the new site that's linked on the disc? I wasn't sure if you had mentioned that yesterday or if there were any plans to do it?

JW: I have no idea, you'll probably have to get the disc and maybe check it out someday. (laughter)

Q: When does the website launch, the one specifically for DVD?

JW: The website will be up on the day of (the DVD) launch.

Q: Is there a temporary page up there now where if you click it says coming soon?

JW: No there is not.

Q: Are there any retailer-specific big promotions around the DVD that you can tell us about?

JW: Well we have quite a retail partnership as you might expect through our Licensing group, and we have a lot of exciting programs with those folks ranging from Wal-mart to Target to all the major players where we have some really fun things planned so yeah, check it out.

Q: Any ideas what number (of DVDs) have been shipped to retailers, in the millions?

JW: No, and I'll tell you when I first came here, my boss Gordon Radley who is the President of Lucasfilm taught me a very good lesson and that's never to underestimate or overestimate what you can do. So we're going to put them out there and we hope the demand is there and if it is that's great and we'll have to see. But I wouldn't want to venture to say.

Q: Do you guys, with the marketing campaign for the DVD, are you kind of doing the same thing you did with the VHS, are you putting an equal or more amount of money into it? How exactly are you marketing it?

JW: More money into...?

Q: The actual campaign, like are you going to do more commercials, more press, more events to publicize it coming out on DVD?

JW: Well we're certainly obviously doing more press, I mean we didn't try to do this type of activity for the VHS. In terms of the kind of activity, yeah we're going to launch it in a very strong way. This is obviously a competitive quarter, but we also think that the quality will speak for itself as well. So it's kind of apples and oranges with VHS because it's a little bit different kind of situation, different medium.

Q: I know we're supposed to confine our questions to Phantom Menace, but it's a DVD-related question. Is there discussion of releasing the first three films (Episodes IV, V and VI) on DVD? Is this (Episode I) going to be watched to see how this works in terms of sales?

JW: No we have no real plans at this point in time. I think you saw and you've been through the kind of process at least that we undertake to do a DVD. George is in the middle of directing and creating Episode II, he's beginning to write Episode III, we don't have any real plans at this point.